Category Archives: WTF

“The New York City Police Foundation received a $1 million donation from the government of the United Arab Emirates, according to 2012 tax records, the same amount the foundation transferred to the NYPD Intelligence Division’s International Liaison Program that year, according to documents obtained by The Intercept. A 2012 Schedule A document filed by the New York City Police Foundation showed a list of its largest donors, which included several major financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase and Barclays Capital — but also a line item for the “Embassy of the United Arab Emirates.”………. Conspicuously, while the financial institutions are listed as donors on the Police Foundation website, the UAE is absent…………..’

Interesting: clearly now the UAE diplomats “can breathe” at will in the Big Apple. This deserves a resounding WTF………..

Odd: I look around the globe, the media in several languages, and I don’t see worldwide intense anger. There is sympathy and a desire to uncover the culprit(s), but no anger. I see some regional real anger and some regional pretend anger, and I see mostly some politics mixed with anger, and it is focused on a particular part of the globe. In recent years, it seems that the world has gone back to the old Euro-centric order, just as it did during the eighteenth and nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Apparently when the angry “international community” or “the world” is mentioned the acronyms that matter are NATO and EU. Forget about UNO and BRICS and PIGS and TRICKS and SCO and WTF and the rest.

No wonder the angry “international community” is never angry when third world airlines are shot down, especially when shot down by NATO missiles (Iran Air 655, Libyan Air).

I guess “global” here means the West: “European Union” or “North American”. The Rest Of the World, almost 85% of it, are just that, ROW, and not part of the “global community”, since we don’t see much if any of the same “outrage” across Asia (outside Malaysia) or Africa or Latin America, or the Middle East. The same applies to “The International Community” that we often see in Western headlines. The Int’l Community is often angry at someone or the other (Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Freedonia, etc). The “Int’l Community” is never ever angry at the European Union or the USA or Canada. And why should they?

“The Union of Arab Ambassadors for Children (UNIAAC) hailed the decision to revoke the Bahraini citizenship of 31 people involved in the destabilization of the country, misleading children into terror acts and engaging them in political rallies.
The union’s General Coordinator Faraj Al Qasimi slammed at the union Board of Directors meeting in Cairo the phenomenon of exploiting children, engaging them in unauthorized marches and sit-ins and attacking the expatriate workforce. This, he said, is “an obstacle to growth”. He also stressed the union’s support to the decision to strip those offenders of their Bahraini citizenship……………”

This is the first time I read that there is such an entity as UNIAAC. And it is supposed to be “for children”, but I bet they will never speak against child–brides in countries blighted by the princes! The Arab ambassadors, yes-men of unsavory dictators and tribal absolute polygamous princes, are unionized!How about that? Even if their regimes do not allow the people, the workers, to be unionized!Andthese unworthy worthies

do things like “hailing”allmeasures taken by their detestable employers. The leaders who have their own union: the Union of Arab Dictators and Absolute Tribal Princes. Also known as the League of Arab States. The League of Arab Despots and Thieves.This is truly the WTF of the day, so far.Cheers
mhgm.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

“DUBAI // A maid who admitted stabbing a man to death now faces a further charge of having consensual sex. EK, a 28-year-old Ugandan, failed to appear before the Misdemeanour Court today to answer the sex charge, but court records show that she confessed in July to the premeditated murder of her compatriot SK. She told the Criminal Court that she killed the man in self defence on April 7 when he started chasing her around the building they were both living in. “I got scared and picked up a knife and stabbed him but I didn’t see where I stabbed him,” she told judge Hamad Abdul Latif……………The police major AA testified that when the woman appeared at Naif police station she was still screaming: “I killed somebody”. When officers searched her one bedroom apartment they found the knife used in the stabbing under her sofa. During the murder investigation she denied having sex with the man she stabbed. She told investigators that the only man she had sex with was another Ugandan man identified as M and that this happened one month before the killing. She said they had met at a Ugandan restaurant in Jumeirah and had sex twice afterwards. ….……..”

A saga of EK and SK and AA and M and, finally, WTF. You’d think they are KGB or CIA or Bahraini Intelligence operatives. In Dubai, where interesting things do happen, especially inside Jumeirah restaurants, apparently.
(We can categorize this gem under ‘Culture’, since I don’t have a category for the other ‘thing’, yet).Cheers
mhgm.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

Neck of the woods“Polyoxometalate and zirconium oxide nanocomposites were synthesized by Iranian researchers in order to increase the catalytic and photocatalytic activities of the nanocomposite used to remove organic pollutants. Being used as photocatalysts, polyoxometalates have less efficiency due to their low specific area and the difficulties in the separation of such catalysts from the reaction media. By carrying out studies on various parameters in order to overcome the disadvantages of polyoxometalates (POM), the researchers succeeded in the synthesis of polyoxometalate / zirconium oxide nanocomposite. Among the other advantages of such nanocomposites, mention can be made of their insolubility that allows them to be easily separated from the reaction media. The use of nanocomposites is cost-effective because they are able to be recycled. The nanocomposites were synthesized in order to remove organic pollutants from the environment and to improve their catalytic activity. ………………” One of the most interesting new items I have read today on Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency. My initial reaction was a resounding : WTF?
Or maybe it is just me: unlike physics, I never got along well with chemistry for some reason (someone once told me that maybe chemistry was too down to earth for my taste, which sounded odd). There was never much chemistry between me and chemistry. Maybe I am just a bit verwirrt.

Neck of the woods“An American teen was unable to shop at an Apple store simply because she was speaking Farsi with her uncle. What seems to be a clear-cut case of ethnic profiling turns out to be in line with official company policy. Sabah Sabet, a 19-year old US citizen of Iranian extraction, and a student of the University of Georgia, took her uncle to buy an iPhone and an iPad at an Apple store in a mall in Alpharetta, Georgia, local news channel WSBTV reports. But she was in for a shocker, as the store clerk refused to sell them the devices after he found out Sabet and her uncle were speaking Farsi. “When we said ‘Farsi, I’m from Iran,’ he said, ‘I just can’t sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations,’” Sabet recounted. Sabet said the incident, which she describes as “discrimination” and “racial profiling,” …………..”

“However, U.S. sanctions laws do not prohibit the sale of products to Iranian Americans or Iranian visa-holders in the United States. Yet, multiple Apple Stores have refused service to both American citizens and Iranian students legally residing in the United States solely on the basis of their ethnicity. In particular, Apple Stores at North Point Mall in Alpharetta, Georgia and at Perimeter Mall in Atlanta, Georgia have beenimplicated in this practice .………..”

The United States is the least xenophobic country and society in the world, yet there are pockets of it around. It is definitely racism (a Russian news agency called it iRacism). These products are made in CHINA, by CHINESE workers, and how stupid can you get for F-sake! I think that is just some parts of Georgia being Georgian. Next time these Iranian-Americans are asked what language they are speaking they ought to say (heaven forgive me for suggesting that someone lie) Hebrew. No problem, piece of cake. Cheers
mhgm.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

“Broken her heart And I know I done wrong But I pray That someday she’ll forgive me And remember When I’ve sang My last hillbilly song………..” Willie (Hugh) Nelson

“For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the specter of nuclear armageddon looms over the world, as the Pentagon announced yesterday that a group of hillbillies in central Tennessee has constructed a fully operational 50-megaton nuclear device. With this potential for destruction in the hands of people who have throughout history acted out violently for no better reason than family tradition, scientists in Helsinki, Finland, have moved the doomsday clock back up to one minute before midnight. Pentagon officials were tipped off to the backwoods people’s potential to invoke mass destruction last week when an I.R.S. agent returned from the Smoky Mountains claiming that a group of hillbillies had threatened to “nuke him up real good.” The bomb’s existence and operational status were later confirmed by a team of scientists who, after finding the weapon in a hay thresher, were run out of hillbilly territory by a family armed with a shotgun andthree dogs named “Duke.”……….”

Mr. Netanyahu was pissed. He said this is a phony report planted by anti-Semites in the IRS with the goal of distracting from the most serious nuclear threat the world has faced since Hiroshima and Nagasaki was barbecued for the sake of peace. Cheers
mhgm.h.ghuloum@gmail.com

“Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander,
today received a cable from Deputy Premier Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al-Khalifa congratulating him on the graduation of his son Shaikh Isa bin Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa from the American University-Washington…………..” Bahrain News Agency, Headed by Information Affairs Authority President Shaikh Fawaz bin Mohammed Al-Khalifa.
But how come the prime minister Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Bin Technocrat Al-Khalifa didn’t congratulate his grandnephew? Was it because he himself flunked out of college some 60 years ago? Or was it because he chose to listen to Timothy Leary and “Turn on, tune in, drop out” some sixty years ago?
I shall categorize this under WTF- Bahrain Branch.Cheers
mhg

“Saudi Arabia has built the world’s first underwater mosque off a northwestern coast close to the Jordanian border, according to reports in an Arabic newspaper. The mosque was built by a group of private divers from Saudi Arabia, who used plastic pipes filled with sand under the sea off the coast in the north-western city of Tabuk, Almadina Arabic language daily reported. “One of our colleagues came up with this idea last summer and we decided to carry it out,” diver Hamadan bin Salim Al Masoudi told the Emirates 24/7 website. “We have just completed the construction of the mosque… when we put the final touches on it, it was time for afternoon prayers, so we performed group prayers in the firstunderwater mosque in history………………..”

My first inclination was that they wanted to convert Western scuba divers, before I remembered than non-Muslim scuba divers are frowned upon, especially inside a mosque. Yet, it would be interesting to see the King of Saudi Arabia and his princes diving toward the mosque on opening day. I bet they can sell tickets for that opening event and recoup the cost of the under-water mosque.

Or

maybe it is built for all these madrassas of fish that the Red Sea is famous for. I am not sure how the Wahhabi Salafi zealots feel about all this. These guys are obsessed with wtf the very early Muslims did: they pretend they would do exactly as these ancient gentlemen did, some even famously rumored to eschew the modern toothpaste in favor of scented toothpicks (miswak). I’d love for them to give up other infidel things the ancients never cottoned up to: like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.Speaking of miswak: I half expect the Wahhabis in my hometown may pass a law banning toothpaste, making it as illegal as pigskin (talking four-legged swine here, exclusively four-legged). There is no doubt that the very early Muslims (Sahaba and the others) had no interest in either toothpaste or scuba-diving, not even to get to a mosque. They even had a famous Arab verse around that time about a fear of dissolving in the sea (as in man being made of mud which dissolves in water).
We can chalk this one under “culture” category, I think. Or maybe “religion”. Or both.
(I think I shall soon post something Freudian about this mad race to “erect” the world’s tallest tower in Mecca or was it Dubai or was it Abu Dhabi………..) Cheers
mhg

Ring of Fire“Love is a burning thingAnd it makes a fiery ringBound by wild desireI fell into a ring of fire

I fell into a burning ring of fireI went down, down, down and the flames went higherAnd it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fireThe ring of fire………..“Johnny Cash (not a Salafi)

Someone in Kuwait allegedly tweeted what was considered insults against the prophet Mohammed (I haven’t read them). He allegedly did it on Twitter, on the world wide web, not within any country’s borders. He was arrested and a high official announced to a fundamentalist tribal mob facing him that “He is a scum and is under arrest“. Local Wahhabi types,mainly Salafis and Muslim Brothers and members of certain border tribes were not satisfied, they knew there was some political mileage to be gained from this. They staged a public rally where Wahhabi politicians and the usual climbers called for the man to be executed forthwith. (I bet most of them haven’t even read what this tweeter allegedly tweeted). Then they called for more restrictions on the freedom of expression (especially expressions that don’t fit the Wahhabi line). After that they decided they might as well put the occasion to some more use and spent some time insulting and attacking the country’s Shi’as. After that they got in a Taliban mood and burned the Iranian flag. Nobody could explain what the Iranian flag has to do with the incident, but apparently these guys love to party with a bonfire. What is a rally or beach party without a nice bonfire? It’s a good thing these Salafis aren’t fond of beer, at least not in public (I don’t know what they do in private but several wives ought o keep them busy). With some beer it would have gotten out of hand. Salafi Six-Pack ain’t no Joe Six-Pack, not a good idea at all, can’t hold their liquor.

(PS: Oddly, the Iranian flag has the word “Allah” designed in calligraphy at the center. These Salafi and MB and Wahhabi types are not supposed to burn anything with the name of Allah on it. They tell everybody that you can go to hell for doing that. I hope they are right this time; that way they can all go to hell. One of my most ardent wishes my come true after all.)